Rumblings on the Right

By Christopher S. Wren; Christopher S. Wren is Johannesburg bureau chief of The New York Times.

Published: October 7, 1990

Chalk Van Niekirk, a retired tobacco farmer, wanted me to understand that he had no respect for President F. W. de Klerk.

''I'm telling you, de Klerk is not an Afrikaner, he's an internationalist,'' snapped van Niekirk, a gaunt, leathery man wearing the khaki uniform of the Afrikaner Resistance Movement. ''And you tell him we're busy sharpening our weapons, and what we want to see is the brains coming out of de Klerk's bald head.''

Van Niekirk's calloused hands gripped one of the pick handles that he and his family had brought, so they said, in the hope of coming across someone of color to bash. The hefty polished wood bore the insignia of the movement - three black 7's joined to form a three-pronged imitation of the Nazi swastika.

''I promise you, my friend, we'll fight to the last drop of blood for a white South Africa,'' he told me, his voice thick with emotion. ''Why do we have to share our houses or schools? If you bought a car, why do you have to share it?''

Van Niekirk insisted that he had nothing personal against blacks, whom he considered unlucky to have been born without his white skin. ''This is our country, and we will be masters of our own country,'' he declared. ''And we want the blacks to be masters of their own country. If they want to come in and work here, they can do so, but under our laws.''

The van Niekirk family had come to the rally at Boksburg, a mining town southeast of Johannesburg, to hear Eugene TerreBlanche, the leader of the Afrikaner Resistance Movement (better known by its Afrikaans initials, A.W.B., for the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging), assure them that their fears of a post-apartheid South Africa were justified. Afrikaners had not gotten where they were by the ballot, TerreBlanche was shouting, and would never give up what they had by the ballot.

Some of his supporters wore pistols tucked inside their heavy belts; others carried riot batons or stiff whips called sjamboks. For all their bulldog bravado, a picnic atmosphere prevailed. Families began to ''braai,'' or grill, steaks and spiced sausages, called boerewors, over charcoal. A lanky man in khaki handed me a paper plate of scorched boerewors, and while I had no stomach for the neo-Nazi rhetoric, I had to concede that the A.W.B. could field a tasty barbecue.

I had approached Schalk van Niekirk and asked him to translate a snatch of TerreBlanche's talk. As we chatted, van Niekirk told me bitterly how he had abandoned a flourishing tobacco farm in Zambia after independence ushered in black majority rule there in 1964. Then he introduced me to his clan. When he got to his granddaughter Belinda, who looked about 6 years old, he winked and asked whom she supported. ''The A.W.B.,'' the little blonde girl chirped. ''All my grandchildren are extremists,'' van Niekirk bragged.

The van Niekirk family are among the hundreds of thousands of whites who feel sold out as South Africa moves into the twilight of apartheid. In less than a year, they have watched President F. W. de Klerk legalize the African National Congress and the South African Communist Party; set free Nelson Mandela and other political prisoners; open hospitals and beaches to all races; repeal a law that reserved parks, swimming pools, toilets and other public facilities for whites, and announce his intention to share power with the black majority. De Klerk has taken his National Party and the country too far, such people say, and they want him stopped.

They are predominantly Afrikaners, descendants of Dutch and French Huguenot settlers who landed on the southern tip of Africa more than three centuries ago. But the right wing includes whites of British descent, some of them ex-Rhodesians, and Portuguese who fled Mozambique or Angola. They are blue-collar workers, shopkeepers and farmers who will have to compete with blacks for jobs and other opportunities once apartheid ends. ''For the first time, they are confronted by the reality that they might lose everything,'' said Cornelius Mulder, a legislator for the Conservative Party, which represents the right wing in Parliament.

Paradoxically, the right wing, perhaps more than any other political element in South Africa, takes President de Klerk at his word. ''What we are skeptical about - the dismantling of apartheid - they believe is actually happening,'' said Raymond Suttner, director of political education for the African National Congress.

Those in the forefront of the struggle to abolish apartheid take the right wing just as seriously. ''We know that there are many whites who are armed and determined to turn our country into a blood bath,'' Nelson Mandela told a rally in Uganda on July 7. A few weeks ago, Mandela charged that right-wing elements had mounted a ''third force,'' stirring up township violence among blacks, and accused the police of inciting it.

Allegations of police complicity have been angrily denied by Government officials, up to and including de Klerk, who said there was no evidence for such claims. But even the possibility that whites could be paying black thugs to sow dissension and fear among other blacks suggests that the right wing could be more subtle and calculating, and therefore more dangerous, than its ham-fisted public image suggests. Some clandestine units within the army and the police have a record of engaging in acts of terrorism against opponents of apartheid. If they fell under the influence of the right wing, they would pose a more harrowing threat than middle-aged men in khaki barbecuing boerewoers at a rally.